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S Africa's ‘crazy’ mountain farmers cash in on truffle bet


Bangladeshpost
Published : 04 Aug 2021 08:13 PM

AFP, Ceres

Only shrubs grew naturally in the sandy acid soil that farmer Volker Miros chose as a site to test the potential for truffle production in South Africa.

The determined mycophile saw no reason why the highly prized fungi could not grow on the plateaus of South Africa's rugged Cederberg Mountains in the west of the country, where the climate is similar to that of Mediterranean Europe.

"We looked at where truffles are grown in the rest of the world and it's in the northern hemisphere, about 32 to 35 degrees north," said the white-bearded Mr Miros, wearing a black beanie on a chilly winter day.

"The same thing needs to be looked at 35 degrees south" - where the family farm lies around 1,100m above sea level, he said.

Mr Miros, 81, who picked mushrooms with his grandfather as a child in Germany, is a pioneer of South Africa's budding truffle cultivation industry.

In 2009, he imported spores of the French Perigord variety - touted as the "black diamond" of the culinary world - and used them to inoculate the roots of oak seedlings that were then planted in the area. After six years of trial and error, and tonnes of calcitic lime to counter the soil's acidity, the first truffles were finally unearthed.

Today, the family is South Africa's No. 1 Perigord grower and supplier, with almost 100 hectares of truffle orchards planted not only in the Cederberg region, but also in other pockets of the country with similar climates.